Saddle Road Press

31/10/2024

Thank you to Verse Daily for featuring "Reversing the Spell" today! And for including the recording too!
One of my favorite poems, and a moment when I knew I was truly free of the abuser.

Ruth Thompson

14/10/2024

Today is publication day for Virginia Loo's "How to B," a memoir that, as best-selling author Becky Cooper puts it, is "Rich in humor and humanity.”

https://saddleroadpress.com/how-to-b.html

SRP is experiencing terrible internet problems, so our postings may be far between and/or incomplete.

When an uber-competent Hawaiʻi-based globe-trotting epidemiologist decides that she wants a child and no partner is on the horizon, she embarks on a long, strange trip through the byzantine maze of finding a donor, resorting to IVF and trying not to be the “weird kid” in her birthing class. Mis...

10/10/2024

SUNDAY Nov 3, 2024 03:00 PM Eastern Time

The next Saddle Road “First Sundays” reading features Donald Mengay, author of THE LEDE TO OUR UNDOING and OJO and Jendi Reiter, author of TWO NATURES and ORIGIN STORY.
Philip Terman will host.

SUNDAY Nov 3, 2024 03:00 PM Eastern Time

PRE-REGISTER NOW! You must register in advance for this meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZItdOChpjIvHNXnWE_nbKORPV60_rye5LH-

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing the link to join.

09/10/2024

Yesterday was publication day for Dane Cervine's Deep Travel. We're having problems with our internet service provider, so getting online and doing email has been a problem. It might be almost fixed. Perils of rural life!

Deep Travel - At Home In The [Burning] World is a book of contemporary haibun by the poet Dane Cervine. Underlying this series of journeys-through the great Midwest of America, Portugal, Spain, Morocco, a bit of French countryside, Italy, then later through New England-is an experience of pilgrimage...

18/09/2024

Here's the traditional hand-holding-proof-copy image of Dane Cevine's "Deep Travel: At Home in the [Burning] World," which will be published on October 8th, 2024. It's available for pre-order from the usual on-line sources, and any brick-and-mortar bookstore that uses the Ingram system can also pre-order it now.

Deep Travel - At Home In The [Burning] World is a book of contemporary haibun by the poet Dane Cervine. Underlying this series of journeys-through the great Midwest of America, Portugal, Spain, Morocco, a bit of French countryside, Italy, then later through New England-is an experience of pilgrimage. The Japanese poet Basho's famous book Narrow Road to the Interior explored both "interiors" of countryside and heart-mind. Ancient Zen poets grounded their work in Nature itself, the passing seasons infiltrating words with blossom and decay. Today, climate change appears as the ubiquitous background in many travels. In Deep Travel, this includes a cataclysmic fire in California at the author's ancestral home, unfolding at the end of his journey in drought-stricken Turin, Italy. The quest: to find a sense of home in this fragile, yet resilient, world.

https://saddleroadpress.com/deep-travel.html

09/09/2024

Today is publication date for two fine books -- one fiction, one poetry. Check them out!

https://saddleroadpress.com/white-doe.html

https://saddleroadpress.com/ojo.html

04/09/2024

The latest "hand holding proof copy" image is of Virginia Loo's "How to B," a wonderful memoir.

Publication date is October 14, but it can be pre-ordered now from the usual sources.

https://saddleroadpress.com/how-to-b.html

04/09/2024

JOIN US!
Diane Gilliam, George Ella Lyon, Melva Sue Priddy, and Ruth Thompson

"HOW WE RENSHI “ – POEMS AND CONVERSATION

Time: Sep 29, 2024 03:00 PM Eastern Time

To join Zoom Meeting;
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86029835722?pwd=ZLX46KbJoxT43aIGJ4ASz8vhwvwEZv.1

Meeting ID: 860 2983 5722
Passcode: 257532

What is Renshi?
Renshi is a Japanese collaborative poetry practice. The traditional renshi makes its way around a circle of poets. The first poet writes a poem and sends it to the second. The second poet uses the last line of the received poem as their title. And so on around the circle. Each poet is free with regard to rhyme, meter, and other technical, tonal and thematic choices. Our renshi group (George Ella Lyon, Melva Sue Priddy, Ruth Thompson and I) made some changes to the traditional renshi. Rather than one to one to one, each week we all respond to anyone’s poems, and rather than limiting the renshi to "last line becomes title," we respond to content, lift words, borrow a title or a shape – whatever has opened a door for us. We don’t critique in our renshi group. The generative inspiration and the companionship are what matter most to us.
Diane Gilliam

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01/09/2024

Here's an interesting review of Jendi Reiter's "Origin Story."

https://solsticelitmag.org/content/origin-story-by-jendi-reiter/?fbclid=IwY2xjawFBdPRleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHXr2BNEAjrIyRq3Hv9R5b_-1YU2vmWcFEJhlplpRtjL2NnbPZQYGOLjclQ_aem_MgbODyhyBFkjHk4gkzo6ug

Origin Story By Jendi Reiter Saddle Road Press, Ithaca, NY 381 pages           My hands were tied to the bed when the timer went off. … “Uh-oh, Peter, was that the oven or the smoke alarm?”   What better way to serve up a novel than with s*x and food? In... Read more »

23/08/2024

The proof copy of Donald Mengay's novel "Ojo," just arrived. "Ojo" is the second novel in his trilogy (the first one was "The Lede to Our Undoing").

The publication date is September 9th.

19/08/2024

Announcing the Saddle Road Press First Sunday Reading Series, hosted by Phil Terman.

On the first Sunday of every month at 3 PM Eastern / noon Pacific two SRP authors will read from their works and have an hour-long conversation via Zoom.

The first pair are Phil Terman and Keith Walker.

For more information go here

https://saddleroadpress.com/events.html

where you can download a PDF.

November 3
Jendi Reiter & Donald Mengay

December 1
Amy Holman & Dane Cervine

January 5
Maria Williams & Jessamyn Smyth

18/07/2024

Wow! I am thrilled to have received a Publishers Weekly's BookLife review that compares Journey Bread to the work of two of my most beloved poets, Deborah Digges and Theodore Roethke.
"The poems illuminate with fairytales and birdsong both what remains and what has been forgotten. 'Memory slips away now,' Thompson reflects, 'like a fish you see moving under water, sliding past the hook.'
Tender, reflective, and finely crafted, Journey Bread baits that hook.
Takeaway: Tender poems of personal history, myth, and meditations on nature.
Comparable Titles: Deborah Digges, Theodore Roethke."
The review will appear in Publishers Weekly's BookLife August 19, 2024.

And I will be reading that poem and others this Saturday at 4 pm eastern in Broadstone Books' monthly reading series. Here's the link to register:

Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Broadstone Reading Stage featuring Michel Steven Krug, Harry Moore, & Ruth Thompson. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

15/07/2024

Today's publication day for two SRP books:

"Orgin Story" by Jendi Reiter, and "The Fiction of Stillness," by Robyn Hunt.

https://saddleroadpress.com/the-fiction-of-stillness.html

https://saddleroadpress.com/origin-story.html

Both are available in print and as Kindles.

From a Miami comic-book convention to a Christian men’s retreat in Georgia, from an elite New Age wellness center to a B**M dungeon in Manhattan, Origin Story follows one gay man’s quest to determine the nature of healing and the price we pay for it. Peter Edelman, a progressive Jewish activist,...

08/07/2024

Today's the publication day for Philip Terman's "My Blossoming Everything."

"My Blossoming Everything" embraces the multiplicity of the quotidian — what the philosopher/theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel calls “radical amazement.” “Now all is quiet,” the poet writes, “save for those sparrows and Neruda/who, too, is blossoming again, the way we all blossom, / even the dead stars, each and every particle of dust / says its testament.” "My Blossoming Everything" evokes the largest poetic themes through the intimacy of personal memory and empathy. Ranging from personal narratives to pastoral lyrics to elegies to odes, braiding love and marriage, childhood and parenthood, friendship, the life of nature and the life of poetry, "My Blossoming Everything" is a testament to the moments of attention in which the world blossoms.

Here's the title poem:

My Blossoming Everything
for Ganya
It is robins’ eggs on the just out-of-reach branch.
It is red raspberries in a circular thicket of thorns.
Who are you, my beloved? My sweetness,
My swallowtail, my infinite youth?
My pine shadow in the tall grass?
My other self, unreachable, my untrappable hummingbird,
My synagogue empty of all but God, my scripture
upon which I write my illegible inheritance,
My last night’s dream that woke me in confusion,
My wings removed in my mother’s womb,
My knowledge emptying with my age, my words
The silence will send out to the silence,
My light I cup in my hands and splash on my face,
My Jupiter newly risen like my heart?

Send a message to learn more

18/06/2024

Here's a fine early review of Jendi Reiter's novel "Origin Story," due out next month (July 15th) and now available for pre-order from the usual online retailers (plus Kindle) and your local bookstore can order it through the Ingram system.

Remi Recchia Origin Story is wonderfully complex and explosive, and while it resists a fairytale ending, it offers something better than closure. It offers hope and a glimpse of how things ought to be.

11/06/2024

And another hand-holding-proof-copy shot. This time it's Trudy Stern's "Warrior Soliloquies," which is a Two Fine Crows book (TFC is SRP's nature and spirit imprint).

Short and sweet, funny and raw - written with clear insight on life in Buffalo NY and elsewhere, this collection explores history, language, nature and identity. Through her imagination, Trudy Stern skillfully harnesses her own mind, memories, and songs. These poems underline the joy that inhabits food, everyday objects, memories, ancestors and the explorations of a poet grounded in place: Buffalo, Jerusalem, the Ozarks, Vermont, from both Jewish and Buddhist perspectives.

The cover image is by Michael Morgulis (New Buffalo Graphics) who also supplied sumi-e section images.

07/06/2024

Here's the traditional hand-holding-proof-copy for Philip Terman's book of poems "My Blossoming Everything" which
embraces the multiplicity of the quotidian - what the philosopher/theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel calls "radical amazement." "Now all is quiet," the poet writes, "save for those sparrows and Neruda/who, too, is blossoming again, the way we all blossom,/even the dead stars, each and every particle of dust/says its testament." "My Blossoming Everything" evokes the largest poetic themes through the intimacy of personal memory and empathy. Ranging from personal narratives to pastoral lyrics to elegies to odes, braiding love and marriage, childhood and parenthood, friendship, the life of nature and the life of poetry, "My Blossoming Everything" is a testament to the moments of attention in which the world blossoms.

23/10/2023

Here's the traditional image for Julie Benesh's book of poems "Initial Conditions," which will be published in March, 2024.

The poems in "Initial Conditions" explore the boundaries between fate and destiny, strategy and circumstance, desire and entropy, by turns bold, humble, amused, appalled, distracted, lethargic, and determined. The title refers to the concept that origins influence trajectory without fully determining outcomes. This debut full-length collection allows space for the poet's words to "progress through regression...evolve through devolution."

You can read more about it (and Julie) on the SRP website here: https://saddleroadpress.com/initial-conditions.html

The image Julie chose for the cover was made right here.